Black and unarmed: statistical interaction between age, perceived mental illness, and geographic region among males fatally shot by police using case-only design

Mental illness is a serious problem in the United States. Based on “current epidemiological estimates, at least one in five people has a diagnosable mental disorder during the course of a year.” Fortunately, many of these disorders respond positively to psychotropic medications. While psychiatrists write some of the prescriptions for psychotropic medications, primary care physicians write more of them. State legislatures, seeking to expand patient access to pharmacological treatment, granted physician assistants and nurse practitioners prescriptive authority for psychotropic medications. Over the past decade other groups have gained some form of prescriptive authority. Currently, psychologists comprise the primary group seeking prescriptive authority for psychotropic medications.The American Society for the Advancement of Pharmacotherapy (“ASAP”), a division of the American Psychological Association (“APA”), spearheads the drive for psychologists to gain prescriptive authority. The American Psychological Association offers five main reasons why legislatures should grant psychologists this privilege: 1) psychologists’ education and clinical training better qualify them to diagnose and treat mental illness in comparison with primary care physicians; 2) the Department of Defense Psychopharmacology Demonstration Project (“PDP”) demonstrated non-physician psychologists can prescribe psychotropic medications safely; 3) the recommended post-doctoral training requirements adequately prepare psychologists to prescribe safely psychotropic medications; 4) this privilege will increase availability of mental healthcare services, especially in rural areas; and 5) this privilege will result in an overall reduction in medical expenses, because patients will visit only one healthcare provider instead of two–one for psychotherapy and one for medication.

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A Tribute to the Late William J. Curran

The Journal of Law Medicine & Ethics ◽

10.1017/s1073110500004058 ◽

1996 ◽

Vol 24 (3) ◽

pp. 274-275

Author(s):

O. Lawrence ◽

J.D. Gostin

Keyword(s):

Mental Health ◽

Health Care ◽

Mental Illness ◽

United Nations ◽

Mental Health Care ◽

Harvard University ◽

Legal Medicine ◽

General Assembly ◽

International Institute ◽

University Professor

In the summer of 1979, a group of experts on law, medicine, and ethics assembled in Siracusa, Sicily, under the auspices of the International Commission of Jurists and the International Institute of Higher Studies in Criminal Science, to draft guidelines on the rights of persons with mental illness. Sitting across the table from me was a quiet, proud man of distinctive intelligence, William J. Curran, Frances Glessner Lee Professor of Legal Medicine at Harvard University. Professor Curran was one of the principal drafters of those guidelines. Many years later in 1991, after several subsequent re-drafts by United Nations (U.N.) Rapporteur Erica-Irene Daes, the text was adopted by the U.N. General Assembly as the Principles for the Protection of Persons with Mental Illness and for the Improvement of Mental Health Care. This was the kind of remarkable achievement in the field of law and medicine that Professor Curran repeated throughout his distinguished career.

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Language and Literacy Predictors of Dialect Density Among School-Age African American Children From Two Geographic Regions

Language Speech and Hearing Services in Schools ◽

10.1044/2020_lshss-19-00063 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 51 (3) ◽

pp. 807-820

Author(s):

Lena G. Caesar ◽

Marie Kerins

Keyword(s):

African American ◽

Multiple Regression ◽

Oral Language ◽

East Coast ◽

Geographic Region ◽

Literacy Skills ◽

School Age ◽

Regression Analyses ◽

Geographic Regions ◽

American Children

Purpose The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between oral language, literacy skills, age, and dialect density (DD) of African American children residing in two different geographical regions of the United States (East Coast and Midwest). Method Data were obtained from 64 African American school-age children between the ages of 7 and 12 years from two geographic regions. Children were assessed using a combination of standardized tests and narrative samples elicited from wordless picture books. Bivariate correlation and multiple regression analyses were used to determine relationships to and relative contributions of oral language, literacy, age, and geographic region to DD. Results Results of correlation analyses demonstrated a negative relationship between DD measures and children's literacy skills. Age-related findings between geographic regions indicated that the younger sample from the Midwest outscored the East Coast sample in reading comprehension and sentence complexity. Multiple regression analyses identified five variables (i.e., geographic region, age, mean length of utterance in morphemes, reading fluency, and phonological awareness) that accounted for 31% of the variance of children's DD—with geographic region emerging as the strongest predictor. Conclusions As in previous studies, the current study found an inverse relationship between DD and several literacy measures. Importantly, geographic region emerged as a strong predictor of DD. This finding highlights the need for a further study that goes beyond the mere description of relationships to comparing geographic regions and specifically focusing on racial composition, poverty, and school success measures through direct data collection.

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Parental Mental Illness in Childhood as a Risk Factor for Suicidal and Self-Harm Ideations in Adults Seeking Help for Tinnitus and/or Hyperacusis

American Journal of Audiology ◽

10.1044/2019_aja-18-0059 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 28 (3) ◽

pp. 527-533

Author(s):

Hashir Aazh ◽

Michael Landgrebe ◽

Ali A. Danesh

Keyword(s):

Mental Illness ◽

Risk Factor ◽

Parental Mental Illness ◽

Seeking Help ◽

Self Harm

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Commentary

Guides Newsletter ◽

10.1001/amaguidesnewsletters.2008.novdec02 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 13 (6) ◽

pp. 8-8

Author(s):

Richard T. Katz

Keyword(s):

Mental Illness ◽

Behavioral Disorders ◽

Rating Scale ◽

Behavioral Disorder ◽

Sixth Edition ◽

Diagnostic And Statistical Manual ◽

Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale ◽

Psychiatric Rating ◽

Psychiatric Rating Scale ◽

Mental And Behavioral Disorders

Abstract The author, who is the editor of the Mental and Behavioral Disorders chapter of the AMA Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment (AMA Guides), Sixth Edition, comments on the previous article, Assessing Mental and Behavioral Disorder Impairment: Overview of Sixth Edition Approaches in this issue of The Guides Newsletter. The new Mental and Behavioral Disorders (M&BD) chapter, like others in the AMA Guides, is a consensus opinion of many authors and thus reflects diverse points of view. Psychiatrists and psychologists continue to struggle with diagnostic taxonomies within the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, but anxiety, depression, and psychosis are three unequivocal areas of mental illness for which the sixth edition of the AMA Guides provides M&BD impairment rating. Two particular challenges faced the authors of the chapter: how could M&BD disorders be rated (and yet avoid an onslaught of attorney requests for an M&BD rating in conjunction with every physical impairment), and what should be the maximal impairment rating for a mental illness. The sixth edition uses three scales—the Psychiatric Impairment Rating Scale, the Global Assessment of Function, and the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale—after careful review of a wide variety of indices. The AMA Guides remains a work in progress, but the authors of the M&BD chapter have taken an important step toward providing a reasonable method for estimating impairment.

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